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Don't even think about it : why our brains are wired to ignore climate change

Most of us recognize that climate change is real, and yet we do nothing to stop it. What is this psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall's search for the answers brings him face-to-face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and the activists of the Texas Tea Party; the world's leading climate scientists and the people who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake. With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different and drive us apart, but rather in what we all share: how our human brains are wired--our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink and reimagine climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. In the end, Don't even think about it is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can grow as we deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced."--Dust jacketRead more...

Questions --
We'll deal with that lofty stuff some other day : why disaster victims do not want to talk about climate change --
Speaking as a layman : why we think that extreme weather shows we were right all along --
You never get to see the whole picture : how the Tea Party fails to notice the greatest threat to its values --
Polluting the message : how science becomes infected with social meaning --
The jury of our peers : how we follow the people around us --
The power of the mob : how bullies hide in the crowd --
Through a glass darkly : the strange mirror world of climate deniers --
Inside the elephant : why we keep searching for enemies --
The two brains : why we are so poorly evolved to deal with climate change --
Familiar yet unimaginable : why climate change does not feel dangerous --
Uncertain long-term costs : how our cognitive biases line up against climate change --
Them, there, and then : how we push climate change far away --
Costing the earth : why we want to gain the whole world yet lose our lives --
Certain about the uncertainty : how we use uncertainty as a justification for inaction --
Paddling in the pool of worry : how we choose what to ignore --
Don't even talk about it! : the invisible force field of climate silence --
The non-perfect non-storm : why we think that climate change is impossibly difficult --
Cockroach tours : how museums struggle to tell the climate story --
Tell me a story : why lies can be so appealing --
Powerful words : how the words we use affect the way we feel --
Communicator trust : why the messenger is more important than the message --
If they don't understand the theory, talk about it over and over and over again : why climate science does not move people --
Protect, ban, save, and stop : how climate change became environmentalist --
Polarization : why polar bears make it harder to accept climate change --
Turn off your lights or the puppy gets it : how doomsday becomes dullsville --
Bright-siding : the dangers of positive dreams --
Winning the argument : how a scientific discourse turned into a debating slam --
Two billion bystanders : how Live Earth tried and failed to build a movement --
Postcard from Hopenhagen : how climate negotiations keep preparing for the drama yet to come --
Precedents and presidents : how climate policy lost the plot --
Wellhead and tailpipe : why we keep fueling the fire we want to put out --
The black gooey stuff : why oil companies await our permission to go out of business --
Moral imperatives : how we diffuse responsibility for climate change --
What did you do in the great climate war, Daddy? : why we don't really care what our children think --
The power of one : how climate change became your fault --
Degrees of separation : how the climate experts cope with what they know --
Intimations of mortality : why the future goes dark --
From the head to the heart : the phony division between science and religion --
Climate conviction : what the green team can learn from the God squad --
Why we are wired to ignore climate change --
and why we are wired to take action --
In a nutshell : some personal and highly biased ideas for digging our way out of this hole

Other Titles:

Do not even think about it

Responsibility:

George Marshall

Abstract:

Most of us recognize that climate change is real, and yet we do nothing to stop it. What is this psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall's search for the answers brings him face-to-face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and the activists of the Texas Tea Party; the world's leading climate scientists and the people who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake. With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different and drive us apart, but rather in what we all share: how our human brains are wired--our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink and reimagine climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. In the end, Don't even think about it is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can grow as we deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced."--Dust jacket